Uncle John’s Log & Co.

For the second time in the past month or so, the doorbell has called us to our front entrance to discover a neighbor holding Walie. Somehow, when an exterior door has been opened, she manages to squirt outside without being noticed. We can’t really scold her, because both times she sat on the porch of the building next door that houses a busy CPA office, rather than travel a long distance or cross the street. She can’t ring the bell herself, so she does the next best thing.

Two times. Too close for comfort.

Began the day with an early 31-miler with nine of my best cycling chums—out to a remote area of Mercer County between Harrodsburg and Perryville, and then back to Danville in a hard pace line on U.S.150. Mark M mentioned a trip to the Appalachian Trail north of Hot Springs. It got me thinking how we could blend that with some out-of-state prospecting and a long-overdue visit to Broadwing Farm. Then I devoted most of my Sunday to further progress on three mixed media collage pieces that I need to have finished by Tuesday. I knew it might be nice to visit Joan during her final shift at the book seller, but I just don’t have an extra penny to spend. I’d like to start “Huck Finn” soon, but I can just borrow it across the street at the Boyle County Library.

• Sometimes I call her “Toots” and sometimes she calls me “Pop.”

• Many, many moons ago she was minding her own business when her mother started spending a lot of time with a young man who had nothing to do with a daughter’s life. Or perhaps he had everything to do with her life, but didn’t know how to do anything except miss an opportunity. Can an audience forget a bad note, no matter how good the performance that follows? Can a jury disregard a piece of evidence, no matter what the judge says about ignoring it?

• She has a father, and I never believed she desired another. So I became something else. I’m still not completely sure what it was or is. Maybe it’s time I find out.

• She is the little girl I never knew. She is the struggling teen I could never comfort. She is the adult who never stops trying. She is the mother of a wonderful grandson.

• She probably understands things about me that I can’t see in myself. We probably need to share words with each other that we don’t know how to say.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my my one and only daughter. I do love you—forever.

It might have been one of those ideal days, had I not left up in the air my potential plans to attend a rifle match with David. Eventually the uncertainties seemed to resolve themselves by default, and I was able to focus my creative attention on preparing artwork for the Layerist exhibition scheduled this autumn in Lexington. At lunch there was an enjoyable Rotary program with bright, bubbly representatives from the “graduating” GSP class. Tonight we had a delightful dinner with Joan—lamb chops, sweet corn, plus Fron’s tomatoes with basil and cheese. To that we added red wine, soy yogurt over mixed berries, and good conversation about how our families ate when we were all kids.

Le Christ des Barricades

“Hear them?” Henri the carriagesmith asks. “How many, do you think?” Anselme cocks his head, adjusts the filthy bandage, and exposes an ear, crusty with blood. He listens.

“Two dozen riders, maybe three. Wearing cuirasses. With torches, perhaps?”

“Yes. I see the glow now.” He hefts the musket to check its priming in the failing light. “We must withdraw to the square and warn our citizens.”

Anselme lifts his hand from the exquisite frame and places it on his partner’s shoulder. “Go alone, my friend. I have strength only to delay them. You must safeguard the sacred icon—for the barricades!”

( 101 words )

• Headed down the trail this afternoon with my pick, shovel, and necktie, acutely aware of the prevailing financial drought. Without the slightest sign of desperation, I presented our design examples to a bank executive and set off another charge, hoping to expose a productive vein.

“By Namekagon’s Silver, the poor devil appears to be gettin’ the hang of it!”

. . . G B P . . .

Tonight’s supper was simple, yet incredibly tasty, thanks to the addition of my brother’s garden produce. He offered us a couple buckets of veggies last night when we visited the Blue Bank Farm to dump yard clippings and pick a container of blackberries. It’s sad that I nearly forgot how good a tomato can taste. The generosity of Dadbo lives on in the heart of Fron…

Saw Nic with his long hair on the way into the Valley, and he helped me unload Ned at Ivan’s old repository. Mombo wasn’t home, but I picked up my copy of the legal papers, and got to see the Virginia E. Dixon Revocable Trust documents in their final form. Turns out that our family meeting wasn’t rescheduled after all, so we actually did miss it while getting settled in Michigan on the 16th.

Much of my time today was spent preparing to lead my first B.I.K.E. | Boyle County meeting in two weeks. With respect to this type of public service, my reflections during the recent southbound trip, after leaving Barefoot’s Resort on Saturday, have me convinced I need to focus on the tasks at hand and avoid the temptations that come with community prominence. This ego needs to be kept on a particularly short leash, so just get the job done.

It was fun to talk to Seth when I saw him briefly in the driveway upon arriving home—on questionable leave from GSP, but in the company of his smiling mother. That he was totally engrossed in his “eye-opening” academic adventure was evident. It’s great to see him grappling with his dreams. Set your sights high, lad…

After being home from our trip some 36 hours or so, I finally found my house keys. One of those quantum warps in space or existential blind spots, I suppose. I was miffed to the point of near obsession, but discovered them at last, in a place I’d already searched three times. Madness…

I’ve also had an unsettled feeling all morning, wondering if maybe there was a Clan gathering yesterday that we missed. Nobody told us if the Council had been rescheduled or not, due to the cancelation of the Seitz family reunion. We got back pretty early Sunday morning and didn’t have much energy yesterday, but we would have made the effort to attend. I guess I should have inquired, but didn’t think of it until I found myself in the midst of a restless sleep.

I said I’d record some notes about the Tour de France, which could not have offered more interest to bicycle fans this year. Floyd Landis won the race after being declared out of contention, pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in sport so far this century. His Alpine performance on Thursday bordered on the superhuman, and he left no doubters concerning his place as Lance’s rightful successor.

When he first started to compete as a cyclist, my pal Brian (who gave me a nice pair of his pedals earlier this year) used to race against Landis, the Mountain Bike Cross Country National Champion at the time. In a recent article about the Tour, several of us local cyclists were asked to make a prediction about who would win the event. I hedged my bets, and the Advocate Messenger printed this quotation from me:

“With Armstrong’s top four challengers from 2005 out of the picture, predicting the victor this year will be harder than picking the winner of a Kentucky Derby. Team Gerolsteiner’s Levi Leipheimer, from the United States, may be the man to beat, but it’s hard not to like the chances of Aussie Cadel Evans or Phonak’s Floyd Landis, another American. However, my hopes are with one of the Discovery Channel cyclists—Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych, Italian Paolo Savoldelli, or, if I had to pick a favorite, American George Hincapie. This is a team that knows how to produce a champion.”

In contrast, Brian didn’t beat around the bush, and he placed a single public bet on Floyd Landis with his own statement to the same reporter. It was a great call, the same kind of smart, gutsy, no-fear attitude he shows the rest of us every week, and that’s what it takes to be a competitor on two wheels.

Arrived home after a day-long 700+ mile drive south yesterday, passing through areas in Indiana that we now learn were threatened by sniper fire. A man was killed on I-65 a couple hours after we drove that same stretch. And here we thought we’d picked the more favorable route, as opposed to the multiple construction zones and heavy truck traffic of I-75.

Anyway, it was good to back and find everything in order, although for a spell I thought someone had ripped off my favorite little galvanized bucket that I keep by the back door, until I discovered that Terie had used it to kindly water our flowers. She’d hidden it on the front porch.

Other than unpack, reply to a few emails, do a bit of yard work, and go for a cross-country run over at the Kentucky School for the Deaf campus, I didn’t accomplish much else today. Caught up on the Tour coverage at ESPN.com, VeloNews, and then watched the recap on CBS at 5 pm. Tomorrow I’ll have to do an entry on the race and start transferring my recent hardback-journal jottings to this log.

We’re heading south from Michigan, having made the decision to avoid I-75 to travel down through Indy. One of the great blunders of our stay is not getting any pictures after Marty and I slew the perch yesterday. Even Dana didn’t think of it. Stupid. It would have been a good memento, plus a potential Website shot for the Resort. Our “coach” took control of the cleaning, and we just went with the flow, in a state of joy and satisfaction, neglecting the obvious documentation. Oh well, sometimes you just get caught up in the moment, so “you had to be there.”

Lot’s of little things stick with me about the week. Like playing “Grand Theft Auto” with Marty and realizing that, although the premise of the plot-line is criminal in nature, the video game has an extraordinarily broad range of programming modules that include driving, motorcycling, bicycling, boating, and flight simulation for both planes and ’copters. In other words, the play experience is, to some degree, what the player brings to it. The level of violence is largely discretionary. Although it may still be true that it has a negative influence on younger users, for most in the target age group, it’s probably no more depraved than the average action movie that same age group thrives on. My conclusion— the criticism neglects the balance of features that make it a technical wonder and which undoubtedly contribute to its success as much as any perceived focus on the violent aspect that underlies any “shoot-em-up” video game.

I also remember talking briefly to the old mechanic fixing a Chris-Craft engine at the Hessel marina. He replied to my question about horsepower with a somewhat dismissive yet still friendly answer that indicated his attitude regarding the supremacy of horsepower— “It’s all in the gearing. But you can’t get these young guys to understand that.” He told me how he used to race boats when he was young and how he would beat boats with more horsepower by generating more torque. What will happen to all these awesome vintage boats when the generation that worshipped them as boys is gone?

And I took great pleasure in watching Marty’s director’s-cut DVD of “Mohicans”. Savoring Mann’s skillful blend of style and substance again has easily convinced me to skip his much-criticized “Miami Vice.”

Most of all, I revisit moments out on the Sartoris boat, hearing Marty’s quiet chuckles of satisfaction as we hooked perch after perch, and I flash back to some great beach frisbee, with the realization that my grandson isn’t a kid anymore.

Memories like that take the sting out of departure day.

As of last night, I think that Mr. Sartoris could no longer take it, so he invited us to go out on his boat this morning to demonstrate successful lake perch methodology. Long story made short— Marty and I brought back a basket of 34 keepers which resulted in an “all-you-can-eat” beer-battered fry later in the day.

Suffice it to say the Sartoris Technique works! I’ll be looking forward to using it again in September. What a difference a little know-how makes. As they say, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” Everything has to be exactly right and then… WHAM. Most catches don’t require a new bait setup. WHAM. Again and again. That man thinks like a fish. And the current conditions in the Les Cheneaux allow for a satisfying reward, if you take the proper approach.

After our big catch we went into town to get tartar sauce for Marty and also visited the Hessel dock, concluding that the weather was right to take out Walt’s Sylvan, so we had a nice boat ride when we got back, circling Government Bay, motoring out the Yacht Entrance, and then coming back around Gravelly Island. Marty got his chance to take the wheel out in open water. We had the familiar geography all to ourselves and it was really enjoyable. As the sun set, it was a classic Barefoot’s Resort scenario… campfire, frisbee on the beach, marshmallow roast, a slice of Dana’s blueberry-peach pie with a scoop of Laurie’s homemade ice cream.

Packing luggage that night didn’t even feel so bad. What a week!

Marty hooked an eleven-inch channel cat yesterday morning while I took my conference call out in the boat, but otherwise, zero perch. Then I botched our precious panfish morsels in the kitchen when I mistook Dana’s sweetened whey powder for flour. Today’s luck was even worse, and, as Marty put it, it was a “demoralizing” day on the water. Meanwhile, Tom P is routinely bringing in 15-30 perch per day himself and his daughter Tracie was catching keepers with her little boy only 50 yards away, while we sat and watched. Hard to figure. I know there are several variables to juggle (plus Marty is a bit green and I spend a lot of time dealing with his tangles, etc.), but we should be doing better. We’ll keep trying. They’re out there. One foot-long perch jumped out of the water so close to me I should have grabbed it. All in all, no complaints. We’ve had some pretty nice days this week after the wind died down. Up to now, I’ve been getting in a good channel swim each day, but by the time we’d gone down to the lake today, the breeze had picked up again. I made an anxious crossing with loud, choppy waters that made it tough to hear any potential boats that might put me in danger. Later we watched “Master and Commander” on Marty’s console and it was even better than I remembered it, a truly great story with exceptionally well-developed characters. Seafaring in 1805 makes my dodging little motorboats look like a tame occupation. Why is it we men must find some element of daring to feel fully alive?

It’s early. Marty and I are getting up to go perch fishing. Dana is kindly making pancakes for us. It just dawned on me that I have a Bicycle Commission conference call this morning which I may need to join by cell from out on the lake. That’s too wild for me—I don’t even typically carry a mobile telephone in my “day job!”

Speaking of wild, I had a dream last night about getting stuck in an unknown J.J. Abrams TV series (from when he was younger) called “Submission,” and it was a phantasmagoric mix of “Baron Munchhausen,” Twyla Tharp, William F. Cody, and “Alias.” I thought, “Wow. This guy is a damn genius!” I had to laugh at myself when I woke up and realized it was a dream.

Marty and I had no luck with our fishing opener, but today we caught one yellow perch and a few sunfish (also called pumpkinseeds). They’re hard to clean. With so many activities back-to-back, I haven’t recorded nearly as much as I want to while it’s happening. The lad devised a diamond-shaped mile swim for me in Moscoe channel, so I accomplished that before we “struck out at the plate” during an expedition for northern pike tonight—at least the sunset was spectacular…

We had our gas oven go on the blink, so Dana used another one in a vacant cabin to roast a turkey breast and bake a blueberry pie. I helped roll out the top crust with a wine bottle. Marty hooked up his PS2, so now he can do his favorite thing that makes him happy, plus it will allow us to watch a DVD or two this week. Did my first channel swim before dinner last night—without fins because I forgot to carry them down to the lake. Even so, it has me thinking about a greater challenge—either speed or distance. Seeing people with perch in their baskets gets my desires going, so I need to run into town and get my license. Let the fishing commence!

Hubbard’s preferences notwithstanding, I want electricity! Nasty storms overnight caused an early morning power outage that lasted until almost 11 am. Lack of coffee stunted the day’s opening for me, but it didn’t take very long to get everything back in gear by afternoon. It got me thinking that I probably have too many objectives for one short vacation, especially when I have two other individuals with which to share my time. In situations like this, I realize I’ve made a mental to-do list as if I was on a solitary retreat. Oh well, it takes me a while to learn things, and now that I’ve got my head straight, I’ll do my best to balance attentiveness to everyone, including myself.

It also got me thinking that I probably need to cut back on the coffee.

Our Indianapolis arrival was behind schedule, but Dana, Marty, and I had a nice Mexican supper with Bruce. Said our goodbyes and headed north this morning, travelling through Ft. Wayne, which was much better driving than I-75. After a big delay in Lansing, getting groceries and trying to find the best route to Grayling, we finally arrived at Barefoot’s Resort before dark and settled into Walt’s old mobile home—not a stylish abode, but comfortable, bright, and more than roomy enough for the three of us. Finished “Payne Hollow” during the drive up. Harlan inspires me to my own individualism, and it’s my hope to find significant time for contacting my creative self over the next few days, with conceptual development for artwork and self-promotion that would be hard to sustain in an environment less conducive than this. That’s my idea of a good break from the typical routine.

Not too many things make me angry, but I must say that I hate to misplace things, and looking for a missing item is a fast track to the loss of harmony as well. I truly hate the entire dynamic, and it goes to the heart of my quirks about organization and a personal relationship with “stuff.”

Before long, we’ll complete our final preparations and leave for Michigan. If we can survive the packing.

It must not matter if you’re famous or anonymous, nor whether you have the means to buy almost anything once you arrive at a destination, there’s still something about packing for a trip that generates tension and the potential for conflict. When you add to that the frustration of locating misplaced items, the combination can be rather combustible.

Charlton Heston thought enough about this volatile phenomenon to include some observations in his excellent collection of journal entries called “The Actor’s Life.” He wrote about various pre-departure blow-ups. Later, he records that he and Lydia finally came to a workable resolution—henceforth, he would play no part at all in packing.

He never mentions it again.

On this point alone, Chuck is more man than I shall ever be.

All I wanted to do was locate a copy of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and Joan has to go and bring me under the spell of Harlan Hubbard. I walked right into it, without philosophical defenses nor emotional armor. Like a dang fool!

Well, at least I’m leaving tomorrow for a humble dwelling at Barefoot’s Resort, where I can make an effort to sort out my longing for paintbrush and engraving tool, clean and eat fish caught with my own pole, and put on my wet suit again, returning to the long meditative swims in open water that I’ve daydreamed about for nearly a year… to contemplate what life will now be like with Harlan under my skin and Joe Wood’s gaze in my imagination, keenly observing how I deal with it.

Brendan made his anticipated “career shift” announcement. Dana looked at the Website of his new employer last night. She said it was so cool she couldn’t get to sleep. I looked at it today and wanted to go destroy my own and start from scratch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site that combines so many contrasting features in such a distinctive and integral manner—legibility, motion, sophistication, clear communication, imaginative hipness, superb writing, exquisite taste… I found myself wondering who had the creative inspiration to fuse Buck Rogers with soothing classical music, and then it hit me that Erik Satie and Jules Verne were contemporaries. Awesome!

While at Kelly Ridge, Joan let us pick out some of Joe Wood’s old fishing poles for our trip to Michigan. She also handed me a book by Harlan Hubbard titled “Payne Hollow.” I pointed out to her the handwritten note on the front jacket flap that said, “Not for loan.”

“Too bad,” she replied. “He should’ve stuck around to enforce it.”

I immediately began to read the small work, as Dana drove us north for a few Lexington errands. I’d never heard of this memoir—the heartfelt story of an artist-craftsman and his quest for an isolated, unconventional life close to the earth, but I quickly understood why it might have been one of Joe’s most treasured books. Hubbard describes his conviction that a longing to live an even more primitive, solitary existence is less important than the compromises necessary for the richer satisfaction of a married life.

The author did not win me over from the start, but rather by slow degrees. I’m struck with the parallel of my own experience with Joe himself. Perhaps he came to the same conclusions about a life alone. Perhaps this is my sister’s way of helping me better appreciate the natural course of their own love story.

Wow… and I still have the second half of the book ahead of me.

Lately it seems as though the more I try to get physically organized, the greater the resulting mess.

I’m sure she wouldn’t be pleased to learn this, but all I have to do to feel considerably less overwhelmed with my own clutter is to witness firsthand what my “Big Sis” is dealing with at her two unfinished properties…

Garrison Keillor informs us that when the E-RI-E was a-rising, the gin was getting low, and so after all these years I now become aware that we’d been listening to a version of the folk song sanitized for children… Or that’s what I’m thinking, but James and I never did find the old record at the Blue Bank Hall today, and none of us could remember the lyrics that left out the reference to booze. I always figured those poor canal boaters ran out of water.

I don’t think July gets much nicer outside than this. I devoted much of the day to dealing with the west-side landscaping at the Town House. This is the zone that’s been the scene of two stolen property “ditches,” and it had to be opened up. Our neighbors hired a guy to clean up the brush on their side, so I followed up today with a drastic shrub trim on ours. The results are dramatic. Nobody is going to use that area as a hiding place now.

• The bewhiskered nugget hunter has gained the upper hand again, and he motivated me to string together one prospecting opportunity after another. Within a 24-hour period I worked the phone to get in to see the local economic developer (so I could pitch our Website services) and set into motion my Michigan contact for a greater regional outreach. I sat down with the director of a new social service agency and discussed their promotional challenges. After successfully following up with a banker who was impressed with our presence at the small biz conference, I stopped by to introduce myself to the principals of the new animation studio in Downtown Danville. Then I took a retired phone system executive to lunch at the Rotary Club. He’s moved to town to join a firm of mining consultants with contacts in South Africa and Russia. This evening we hit the political scene and panned for a bit of dust at a fundraiser, relaxing our long-standing aversion to campaign advertising assignments.

“That’s more like it… Reckon I oughta take the dang mule whip to him more often!”

. . . G B P . . .

Yes, it’s true that we’ve cut back dramatically on prepared foods and eliminated almost all meals out.

The result— I’ve been eating like a king!

The “Etch A Sketch” came easier to me than it did to most, but I never dreamed of doing work like this guy. Joan sent me the link to his site.

I suppose I’ve always had fairly decent eye-hand coordination. My sax fingering wasn’t that good, though; it had to do with rarely practicing, in addition to being able to blow on a reed, which I always detested at some fundamental level. Actually, I could have been a great bulldozer driver, or operated one of those tall cranes they use to build a skyscraper. Maybe I could even fly one of those Predator UAVs… Video games? You better believe I could do that, but I’ve never really allowed myself more than a dabble with Marty now and then. For me, doing more than that would be about as wise as trying rock cocaine.

Considering the fact that I’m the volunteer Webmaster for the Boyle County Republican Party Website, and it hasn’t been modified since before Election Day in 2004, it seems appropriate that I spend some of my 4th of July holiday updating the site for the 2006 campaigns. Patriotic as it sounds, it’s just another symptom of my metastatic pro bono condition. The Graybeard Prospector wants to drag me out back and give me a taste of his mule whip. He’d be within his rights.

I spoke to Chris P on the phone today and confirmed our reservation for the hilltop mobile home at Barefoot’s Resort this month. It’s ours from the 15th to the following Saturday morning. He said they’re having the best fishing season in over ten years. Lots of yellow perch and northern pike. Marty needs to pick out one of Joe Wood’s fishing poles for the trip. Joan was kind enough to offer him one a while back.

It’s clear that the cormorant control measures are finally kicking in, and the news is exciting. To restore the natural fishing pattern of the Les Cheneaux is the ultimate goal. As much as I love fishing for king salmon in the U.P., one has to recognize that the Michigan resource managers stocked those waters with salmon in response to the dwindling number of indigenous species. It’s only too obvious now that the introduction of non-native water fowl caused a devastating ecological imbalance that’s only now being successfully mitigated.

Conditions could hardly have been better on the second day of July for our bike ride early this morning. A 35-miler took us down through Moreland and out Black Pike, past where my brother Jay and his family used to live. Hustonville was quiet as a ghost town when we pedaled through, a perfect spot for our turnaround point. My pal Elisabeth was amused about winning the women’s division at the 5k in Stanford yesterday. She’s trying to figure out what to do with the huge trophy she was not expecting to bring home. A NYC artist who spends her summers in Lincoln County, she does quite a bit of running and cycling during her stays in Kentucky. She turns 50 later this year, and a good indication of her high fitness level is that I take ample satisfaction in ever being able to stay up with her on the road. When I asked her if she knew any sculptors, she laughed and said, “Lots!”

— Month of June workout totals: Swim-2; Bike-12; Run-1; Lift-5; Yoga-2

— All the other training took a back seat to my cycling this month, as I push to regain the conditioning I lost during 2005. The Tour started in France today without Armstrong, who, at age 35, is preparing to run the New York City Marathon. At age 36, Agassi played his final match at Wimbledon today. With all the talk of aging, legendary athletes, it’s interesting to note that both men are still in the acknowledged target zone for an endurance event like the triathlon. I don’t expect Agassi to do more than settle into his role as a retired tennis superstar after his U.S. Open appearance in New York, but I think Lance might be a very different story. If he demonstrates the ability to run an impressive 26.2-miler in his own New York performance a month later, just watch—and you read it here—for him to set his sights on the
Iron Man competition. How much time could he spot his opponents in the water before devastating the field on a bicycle and then finish strong with a marathon run? It’s interesting to contemplate. He won’t do it for sport. He’ll do it as a cancer fighter, and what better way to keep his cause before a world audience?

— As I continue to look for my next major novel, my bedtime reading jumps back and forth between Isaac Asimov and Ernest Hemingway. If you don’t think that’s a bit strange, you should try it some time. They do have one thing in common, however. When I’m reading either one, I’m struck by how profound an influence they appear to have had on succeeding generations of writers. Every creative person is influenced by those who come before, but few of us can push beyond the derivative and craft something new for others to emulate.

— I completed a proof of my “Bridget” comic this afternoon. I had a hard time convincing myself that it was finished, so I stopped and compared notes with Brendan. I was able to achieve the rough, sketchy look I desired, but some areas of the artwork still need refinement. Once I got past the storyboarding phase, which was genuinely challenging for me, I found deep satisfaction executing the drawing itself. No doubt I could get rather good at this if I tried it more that once or twice a year. I don’t expect to be getting urgent calls from Kazu Kibuishi any time soon, but I was very happy to learn that Brendan thought my effort looked “fantastic.”

V & S